Seiner Gnaden begehren wir:
Nun helff uns die Gottliche Kraft und das Heilige Geist:
Kyrie Eleison!”
It would be pleasant to know the words of the English Pilgrims’ Hymn on arrival within sight of Joppa, when they all sang together, led by two priests. There were many nations represented on board the ship, Italians, Lombards, Gauls, Franks, Germans, English, Irish, Scots, Hungarians, Dacians, Bohemians, Spaniards, and they joined together in the “Hymn of Ambrose and Augustine,” i.e. the Te Deum Laudamus.
As for the life on board, the inconveniences, the insects, the turbulent slaves, the sea-sickness, Felix spares us nothing. The earliest of our sea songs, belonging to nearly the same date, is an account of a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Saint Iago of Compostella. It is evidently the work of one who writes from experience. The ship is filled with pilgrims, and they are all sea-sick together:—
“Men may leve all gamys,
That saylen to Saint James’s;
For many a man hilt gramys;
When they begin to sayle.
For when they have take the sea,